A Matter Of Lifestyle And Death

The lights are on, the television is roaring away, the cable is feeding us hundreds of channels that we are currently ignoring, and yet I feel like I'm wandering through the day with one eye closed. This morning at a quarter to eleven, our telephone stopped working. No sparks, no explosions, not a puff of smoke. Just one click and the noise at the other end of the line stopped. No dial tone, not even static on the line.
My wife, son and I went into crisis management mode and immediately set about finding the source of our outage. All the other phones in the house were hung up, and there was electricity going to all he places that would keep us connected to the outside world. We turned our DSL modem off and on. We looked for obvious breaks in the wires in and outside our home that might keep us from receiving important calls. Nothing.
Ever the resourceful pioneer, my wife found her cell phone and set out to contact anyone who might be able to help us in our hour of need. There was a moment's consternation when we realized that we would have to rely on the fearfully antiquated technology of a phone book to find the number of our AT&T customer service center. After a terrifying experience of analog data searching and a maze of possible choices of assistance droids, she put our name and number in a queue for service at the earliest possible moment: Monday afternoon.
I'm sure she heard me sigh. How could we go on without our telephone and connection to Al Gore's Internet? For a whole weekend? We went out to lunch and a swim with some friends, and I still felt anxious about our lonely existence. I called the customer service people back. This time I decided to attack it from the DSL side, since that was my chief concern. Not being able to check my e-mail for more than twenty-four hours might have a detrimental effect on my psyche. When I finally made it through the pre-recorded gauntlet and spoke to a human being, I was told that I was being transferred back to a service number for our home phone line. Happily, I only had to listen to a few moments of hyperbole about customer satisfaction before I got a flesh and blood response to my concern: There was a problem with "the outside line" and it would probably not be dealt with until Monday. "I've got to be honest with you," the tech voice said, "We've only got a skeleton crew out there on the weekends, dealing with lifelines and such. I told him I appreciated his candor, and then he tried to reassure me about just how quickly things would get straightened out. On Monday.
That's when it occurred to me: I used to live for months at a time with no telephone service, and I managed to live through a week-long vacation this summer with only the most infrequent peeks at my e-mail. It could be done.
I just didn't feel like it. I didn't like the universe telling me that I had to go without. I don't like making calls on my cell phone. I enjoy having access to the information super-highway, even if I'm not driving in the super-fast lane. I am posting this entry on one of those "free wi-fi" outposts, and it feels a little like using a public restroom. I'm happy for the convenience, but I just don't feel like I should sit down on anything. I expect all will be well on Monday, but if I don't call you back, please understand we're doing everything we can: waiting.